New York’s Truck Problem

Everyone knows New York traffic is impossible. That’s why I hardly ever drive. Doesn’t matter that I’m on the train an hour a day each way, halfway crowded half the way and then squished in the rest, that definitely beats the two hours I’d be stuck in the car coming in and going out of the city. It’s a big city, and a big city is going to be slow to get around. There’s just that many people. Nothing you can do about it.

What you can do something about, though, is trucks. I don’t drive into the city for work, as I said, but when I do drive (on weekends mostly), the trucks heading into the city are just impossible. They hog all the lanes. One of them is always driving ten miles under the speed limit, the next one is taking up a lane going just one mile faster, and the fast lane has always got a truck speeding fifty miles too fast trying to run everyone down.

Someone needs to do something about this. I know they’ve got places to go and we need them, I accept all that pretty philosophically, but I just can’t stand to see them take up the entire highway. Always, and I mean always, I’ll then see a cop has some dinky little car pulled over a mile down the road. What was the dinky car doing that these trucks aren’t? I think there’s an issue there that people don’t want to look into. Are the cops looking the other way for a reason? I don’t know, but I would like to.

Anyway, I just want to take a moment and vent about this stuff. I nearly got run off the road the other day when a trucker realized almost too late that a lane was closing. There were all the normal warnings, but the guy kept going, not speeding up or slowing down, no turn signal. Then, right when the lane ended, he tried to merge right into me. Lucky for me, the next lane had just enough room to squeeze my (dinky) car in, otherwise, I’d be squished on the side of the New York highway instead of writing this.

Doing just the least bit of research, I discovered that truck accidents are stunningly common and pretty catastrophic when they occur.

Again, all I’m saying is something needs to be done about this. New York is a great place to live and work. I love it here, and I know there are sacrifices required to live in and around a big city. I accept the traffic, the crime, the lack of space, the noise. I just don’t want to be squashed when I’m out in my car. I want to be able to drive on my rare free weekends and not have to worry about massive 18-wheelers running me down. Is that so much to ask?